SAMURAI SADDLES

I recently found this old plastic seated knight seen here on the right. He's got a shield and a lance.

As soon as I saw it it reminded me of a cast metal seated Samurai I got as a youngster seen above. He's got a long spear and remained unpainted.

Both riders require a horse and the Samurai's is waiting at the back. I can't recall exactly where I got the Samurai and horse from but it was definately mail order using a ..... postal order! I did it a lot in the early 1970's. 

It may have been the only way to remotely pay back then for a kid like me without a chequebook. Did you send postal orders?

Thinking about it, Argyle Models rings a bell.

I shall have a dig in my old stubs.

Did you have a Samurai or a Knight?

Dark Shadows and Dr.Who

 A further visit to an Emporium garnered these photogenic items.

See anything you like? 

SPV and Dinky missile carriers. I have the large one in plastic by JR21.

An amazing miniature typewriter.

A gorgeous DIY dolls kitchen, which I thought was fantastic modelling.

An great condition ambulance unfamiliar to me.

Those wonderful Mini Sets.

These Dr. Who paperbacks were in Oxfam in Wetherby.

I looked this annual up. It came out every year for years. Just Westerns! How cool is that!

This trinket box reminded me of a strange old toy I've seen in reference books, A Dark Shadows musical box. I just can't think of the woman's name. You?

This ace metal Knight on horseback was in the gift shop of English Heritage in Gainsborough. There's just something about knights.

AN AURORA KNIGHT?

 

I picked up these parts of a plastic Knight in armour last summer.

All chromed parts.

Looking at the design it looks like the Red Knight of Vienna.

Could it be Aurora? Why is it chromed and not red?

Is it a re-issue?

Or is it the original ...

... from 1958?

I wonder how you can tell? Anyone know?

EE BY GUM! ITS STUCK!

Breaking away from house, down the midweek booty today I picked up just a couple of cheap trinkets.

An old Waddingtons Battlestar Galactica jigsaw. Cylon Warrior. Did you have one of these?

A bag of old figures, knights and horses, which I've dunked ...

and dried off. Recognise any?

I also picked up some old Seventies greetings cards, which I'm always on the look-out for, as I enjoy sending them to friends and rellies. This was a box of varied greetings and sizes, all very nostalgic.

Quite a few envelopes had either self-gummed to the card top or in some cases completely sealed themselves with the cards inside!

Not completely sure how to separate the gummed edge from the card without damaging the picture. Any ideas?

The pay-off for a vintage greetings card fan like me is an image like this, hidden for decades in a sealed paper envelope yellowing with age, only to be re-discovered by yours truly in a house clearance jumble box in a field this morning.

Now that is a classic Seventies composition. Curls, browns and golds! Do you like it too?

Oddly enough I saw two paperback horse books in the house clearance boxes; Follyfoot, no less, and Black Stallion. I also saw an old boxed Evel Knevel Scramble Van and hundreds of rock music cassette tapes - like I had way back - such as Deep Purple, Van Morrison, the Jeff Beck Group and the Jeff Healey Band, but as I'm trying to cut-down on what I fetch home I resisted temptation!

Would you have resisted?

UFOs- Unidentified Flotsam and Oddments

I bought a box of old tat this morning at a German car boot for two squid before the regen showers drove us away.

I've ID'd some of the toys over Frühstuck. Excitingly I think the silver knight parts are the Aurora Red Knight and they look battered enough to be original.

The Star Wars parts appear to bodies and limbs from the 1995 Power of the Force Boba, Darth Vader and Tie Fighter pilot along with a 1996 Shadow of the Empire Prince Xizor, a new one on me.

TTherte are some Elastolin viking torsos and bases, together with a mixed lot of old German plastic and metal bits like Crucifixes and a snowman.

The motley crew centre front is a mystery. Toy pistols, a raygun, a lizardskin arm, a solid metal cape, a red seat and so on. Any help with these readers and would be very dankbar!

THE KNiGHT STUFF

As a kid in the Sixties I had a few Marx Knights, which I adored. My fave was the gold knight. 

So when I saw this modern silver knight, a gothic action figure by Kaiyodo of Japan, I was blown away. What a toy!

What do you think readers?

German Jeans

I got this old plastic knight yesterday. He looks like a page boy. Is that an errant? It's made by Jean of West Germany. Anyone know Jean?

UNDER THE SPELL OF SWORD AND SORCERY

As a kid I was mad about knights on armour and adored my plastic breastplate, helmet and sword. having a mad love for monsters too it was only natural that I'd like fantasy films that involved swords and beasts. Jason and the Argonauts and the Sinbad films filled my head as a nipper.

This sub-genre became known as sword and sorcery, which I suppose was a fantasy off-shoot of the older Sword and Sandal genre.

In my twenties I enjoyed films like Beast Master, Conan, Red Sonja and Legend [the one with Darkness].

Thanks to Netflix I've recently caught up on a few more modern Sword and Sorcery flicks of late, mostly mythological in nature:

The Immortals: rather than the ubiquitous Perseus, this film was about Theseus, another of Zeus's half-human super sons.  His epic struggle against a barbarian army was quite enjoyable and I particularly liked Mickey Rourke's portrayal of its brutal leader. It reminded me of his role in Sin City and the film had the look generally of 300. The other baddie in the movie is the Minotaur, who was disappointingly small. I would have loved a colossal bull beast man. Theseus was played by Superman Henry Cavill so the Minotaur had no chance.

Seventh Son: I enjoyed this film a lot. It had all of the main food groups: witches, monsters, warriors and warlocks. It also featured Pendle Mountain, which was clearly based on Pendle Hill in my birth county of Lancashire and the spiritual witch hill of England [the new Hell Boy features it too!] Jeff Bridges and his old chewy voice is a real gem playing the Warlock and the film's lead.

Gods of Egypt: its unusual for a big film to be about Egyptian Gods. Osiris, Anubis, Ra, Seth. They were all present and correct and knocking seven ankhs out of each other. I enjoyed it as well.

Do you like these sorts of films readers? Have you any Sword and Sorcery toys or games? What about the action taking place on other planets like John Carter of Mars?

KNIGHTS IN AMERICA

The other day I posted this piccy of some loose action figure accessories I had. It included a silver Conquistador helmet shown below bottom right.

It reminded me of the helmets I had with my Marx Noble Knights from back in the Sixties like the Silver Knight, Sir Roland [pic: Worthpoint].

But I knew it was a modern helmet so I thought of modern 12 inch Knight dolls.

Bam! It then hit me. John Smith from Pocahontas! You can see the helmet in this 1995 Mattel Disney box top right. Result!

Amazingly Pocahontas is actually buried in Gravesend here in England. Sadly I've never been but her name always makes me think of the superbly brilliant folk rock song Pocahontas by Neil Young, along with his Cortez the Killer.

The thought of a 'Knight' meeting an American Indian Princess always makes me think of that other Knights-America tale, albeit fiction, A Connecticut Yankee in the Court of King Arthur by Mark Twain 1889, a book essentially about travelling back in time! Its premise reminds me of another book I read last year by the late great Michael Crichton, Timeline, with cover art by Chip Kidd, who some of you will know as the author of the superb Batman Collected.

DAYS OF OLD

I collected key rings as a kid.

One of them was a metal knight in armour a bit like this one.

Mine though was chunkier, shorter, fatter.

Anyone know what I mean?

A WEE DRIVE 1

Like astronauts roving,

we drove across the foreboding Cairngorms of Scotland.

At towering Braemar Castle we paused.

The Edinburgh Watch were on the march.

They spotted us!

Attention!

Aim!

Fire!

The local Chieftain wasn't too impressed.

Others have though and been moved to capture the castle in oils

and fancied they saw pirates as one Robert Louis Stevenson had in Treasure island written nearby.

Guards, muskets, Lairds, pirates!

Phew!

Time for tea at the BnB!

Do you like castles readers? Did you visit them as a kid?

Have you read Treasure Island?

WHEN KNIGHTS WERE YOUNG

Knights were a huge deal when I was a kid. Like Dinosaurs and Pirates, Knights were one of those essential pages of history which kids just wanted to jump in.

My bookcase was full of Knights and Minarets and tilt-yards. Ivanhoe and the Black Arrow leap to mind - in glossy hardbacks, the publisher of which escapes me. I know they weren't Ballantine. Those were matt with a grainy feel, not gloss like these.

Alongside classic kids novels were history books. History back then was about Kings and Queens and battles and castles. One book I adored was A Pageant of History. You could get one free in TV21 - see below - but mine will have come from Sweetens bookshop in Preston town centre I would have thought. My Mum and Dad must have had shares in the place the number of Sweetens books we had in the house. Sweetens always put a tiny oblong sticker on the inside cover giving their name and address.

The thing I liked the most about A Pageant of History were the simple line drawings of Kings and Queens of Great Britain going right back to before William the Conquerer 1066 . I would happily copy these drawings all day - mostly heads and crowns - in light blue Silvine drawing books like this.

God how I loved drawing in those thin side-on Silvine books. I think between Silvine, Collins and Paul Hamlyn my childhood education was sorted really. I drew in my final Silvine around 1981, which I still have in the loft. Its full of birds in watercolours. That was my twitcher period!

Did you draw in Silvine drawing books?

In my folk's old downstairs bookcase were more historical books. One was an ancient looking green hardback with pages of super thin paper. It was a book of Sir Walter Scott's stories and there were a few of these, from different antiquarian authors. I wonder where those books ended up? Probably the bin.

Another book of my Mum's was The Heirs of the Kingdom by Zoe Oldenbourg. I actually still have this. It was a gift to her in 1973 from my older brother. From Sweetens bookshop no less. I tried to read it last year but found the style hard going. I'll give it another whirl one day for old time's sake.

Did you like to read about knights of old readers?